Liam Cameron accuses top UK names of ducking

Ringside 22/03/2018

Commonwealth Middleweight king Liam Cameron is convinced that 2018 will be his year. The former ABA champ from Sheffield, picked up the title last October against fellow ‘Steel City’ fighter Sam Sheedy after two failed attempts at super-middleweight previously.

Currently training in Lanzarote, ‘Cannonball’ Cameron, 20-5 (8), will make the first defence of his crown against Bristol’s Danny Butler on April 27 at the Ice Sheffield Arena, with the action being broadcast live on free-to-air channel Freesports TV (Sky channel 424 and via Freeview/Youview on channel 95).

Butler picked up the Southern Area Middleweight Title in his last outing, also October last year, and should prove a decent yardstick for Cameron, having been beaten just six times in 33 bouts, with one of those losses coming to former world champion Darren Barker.

If he comes through the test, Liam has his sights firmly set on domestic champion Tommy Langford, a man he has previously beaten in the amateurs. Firstly though, he knows he needs to negotiate Butler, and says he will definitely build on his blistering KO win over Sheedy.

“Training is going good. I’m pushing hard, doing my diet, just like before [the Sam Sheedy fight] and I want to progress from that victory. I know I can do the weight – I’ve ticked that box. I know I can punch – ticked that box too. And I know I can stop people, so it’s all good. I’m happy at middleweight. It’s six weeks out and I’ve got a stone to go, which is not much, so everything’s on track.

“I don’t know whether this fight will be tougher than the Sheedy fight, to be honest because I’ve never seen Danny Butler fight. I just know he lost to Gary Corcoran, who is a welterweight. Obviously, it’s going to be tough, but everyone said that about Sheedy too. They said Sheedy had never been stopped; he said he’d never been put down and there was no way I was going to stop him apparently. I just like to prove everyone wrong, so I’ll do that again. This year is going to be good, but I need to get past Butler first.

“I called out Brian Rose but he didn’t want it, he’s a world title challenger but said he needed a couple of warm up fights, and if that’s not ducking then I don’t know what is! Langford doesn’t want to know; he doesn’t want it because I’ve already stopped him in the amateurs. Langford is the fight I really want, we can put the British and Commonwealth titles on the line, and the winner moves onto bigger things.

“In the amateurs it was just like when Langford fought the Georgian guy [Avtandil Khurtsidze]; he was letting his shots off then dropping his hands with his chin in the air. I was chucking shots and they were landing every time. He must have ‘gone’ about four times in our fight and that was with big gloves on and head guards, so imagine what I’d do to him with 10-ounce gloves and no head guard!”